Are the things that look like stretch marks on the front cover bad?

http://www.eng.utoledo.edu/~eschrein...5/DSC01345.jpg

No, those are normal casting marks found on both the inside and outside.

Yea the last 6 front housings I have seen look like that.

That engine had:

The wrong imbalance flywheel ('81-82 flywheel on a light-rotor engine... BAD BAD BAD!)
Siezed rear rotor bearing (had to hammer the E-shaft out, destroying it)
Roached stat bearings
Coolant seals all burnt away
Evidence of rotor-to-side housing contact (can we say overrevving?), including side seals hammered into the rotors
Severious chrome flaking
and of course lots of rust from sitting without being oiled down first!

So really there were at least three reasons why this engine should have died long before it finally siezed up! But it didn't die!

Next time someone tells you how "fragile" rotary engines are, LAUGH IN THEIR FACES!

And tell 'em that FD's are not the only rotaries ever produced :)

Which reminds me, DAVE PUT SOME MMO IN YOUR OTHER THREE ENGINES AND GIVE THEM A FEW TURNS!

It was fun once, the next time we tear down an engine that is all rusty inside it will just be sad.

i have mmo and atf in the good one. the other two, not yet. i should squirt some in there, lol. just to make sure;) when do you guys want to do a rebuild? i have an engine that lost front seal and one that lost a rear seal. can we say frankenrotor, lol

anyone have an engine that they opened in worse shape?

Opened one up a while back tha tlooked like yours, but was so rusted the carbon fell off the rotors. There was huge flakes of rust and crud and mud (wth?) in the insides. Yours looked pretty bad, atleast your rotor bearings look good :lol:

Bored I see... I wonder what brought this back to life.

Yes i don't have pictures of it, the engine was over-revved and threw 2 apex seals one in each housing, amazingly the motor still ran kind of was driven another 5 miles, when we tore it down every housing/plate had chunks removed, pieces made it to the oil pan as well

i was bored and came across this old thread so i figured that i would just revive it because it takes me back to a good time in my life :)

FWIW, I've had the same thing. I had a seized SE motor that I routinely added MMO to, hoping it would free up. I finally gave up, unstacked it, and just had rusted rotors. All the rust was pickled by the MMO and scraped off with a razor blade. The irons and housings are absolutely perfect, though the rotors were shot. Just goes to show you guys that sometimes you can get lucky, and there's usually something to be saved even from junk motors, so y'all keep your composure when you're taking a junk engine apart.

Sorry yours was junk, though.

Yes. The motor that came in my '83. The owner before the previous one had, in his wisdom, left the hood and the air cleaner off and parked the car outside under a tree for several years. I wish I took pictures. It was similar to your motor, but way worse. About three inches of rusty mud in the bottoms of the housings, water poured out when the spark plugs were removed, rotors fused to the irons, etc.

There was mold growing on my rotors. I'm dead serious.

i'd love to see pics of that...sounds awful.

Yea sounds pretty damn gross, got any pics?

wow, i'm scared to do a tear down of my motor next week now.

No, I didn't get pics. I wish I had. Funny thing was, the chrome on the rotor housings was beautiful. Unfortunately, the water jacket had corroded to the point where they were unusable. The owner probably ran it with straight water for a long time.

^^thats sad....

aww naww, i got one thats been sittin for bout 8 years. was running when pulled out of car. i was gonna redo the short block jus to have one ready to go in when my "172000" mile motor blows. but after those pics i dont kno...